Home Staging NJ Luxury Real Estate

And does the architecture of the house really matter when homeowners and stagers aer supposed to produce something generic, hoping to make the home appeal to as many potential buyers as possible?

Does anyone really know the difference between a Queen Anne and a Victorian?  Mission/Priarie vs. Arts & Crafts?  And my pet peeve - Tudor vs.  Stick?  Surely the bottom line is - "So what if the home is Second Empire - the kitchen's a wreck and the bathrooms haven't been touched since the 60s!"

It does matter.  If you decorate a Tuscan villa (aka Neo-Mediterranean) with big heavy, intricately carved oak country pieces your buyers cannot see, let alone FEEL, the space, the archways, the detailing, the proportions, the innate beauty and warmth the builder created. You're leaving money on the table.

The way to get the most value out of any home is to

1.  Identify what you've got

2.  Acknowledge and look after it appropriately (see the 10% Blog)

3. Add value in a congruent, harmonious way when you take it to market.

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This is my favorite house in town.

It's built by a local architect and is supposed to be an amalgam of styles.  I love its madness; it's permanent whimsical eccentricity and I completely disagree that "it's an eye-sore!!"  Obviously, there is no point trying to identify this particular home's style or period.  One could consider "McMansion Fusion" I suppose, but that is not the point of this post.

I think identifying architectural style AND period is important, and important to get RIGHT!  Why?

1.  Truth in Advertising (when you're listing the thing)

2.  Knowing what you've got helps you appreciate it, fully.

Appreciate in the sense of acknowledging it, i.e. being happy and grateful that you own it, and appreciate it in the context of adding to its value.  Maintaining the home and keeping in step with the times is a major part of appreciation - just the same way one updates one's wardrobe, car, TV.  The other part of appreciation is the room-by-room steps you take when the home is being offered for sale, to maximize every opportunity.

Knowing what your house is, does not mean you have to "keep" everything authentic.  No-one wants a kitchen from the reign of Henry VIII!  I am no longer the purist I was.  But you will have more success with a home if you stay within style.  Simply put, a Victorian (or indeed anything picturesque) will look better with more curly, circular shapes and richly textured layering than a Mission-style home; a Tudor looks best with square, symmetrical styling (and lots of large floral patterns, brocade, bouillon fringe etc.) and Arts and Crafts looks best with simple, linear stuff.   I'm not even advocating all Stickley furniture, but you should choose something simple, with strong lines.

Architecture is regional.  (We know this; presumably because of climate.)  If my readers would pardon an enormous license, I would group the architecture of the Northeast and Mid-lantic part of this country into 7 broad categories.  This then would guide me (and does in my staging business) as to the style best suited for every house, therein creating a congruent, harmonious, cohesive home that will yield maximum money when sold.

My 7 categories are:

•·         Pre-Colonial

•·         Colonial

•·         Georgian

•·         Picturesque

•·         Linear

•·         Contemporary

•·         McMansions

Each category gives you

1. an overall feeling - be it simplicity or multi-layered complexity, sophistication vs. plainness, calm vs. excitement
2. a certain look - in terms of color, line and texture
3. and a guideline on symmetry.

Then and only then do I go generic, always looking to widen the home's constituency of buyers.

Identify what you've got, and let that guide your appreciation accordingly.

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© JulietJohnsonStaging.  For more information on home staging NJ and the Doctrine of Appreciation, please visit www.JulietJohnsonStaging.com.

The Victorian Country, intricately carved buffet that takes up most of your Dining Room because it doesn't fit in her condo....

The charming, though perhaps a little large, acrylic-on-canvas vase of tulips (er, possibly?) she painted with some buds at the Y at one of their Monet in Morning sessions...

The curious brass and macrome chandelier that can hold candles but always had plants (droopy spider plants) in it and is now a strange shade of grey, brown, beige, don't know...

The beaten up Oriental rug that missing most of the bottom left hand corner - I know they're more valuable when they're older, but we don't get a lot of Bedouin buyers in this neighborhood...

and who's kimono is that in the shadow box?  Anyone remember?

We thank you, all of you, and ask you in future to divest yourself on Craigs' List not into your children's homes that we're all trying to sell.  There's some money that NEEDS to be left on the table!

<<<<<all photographs have been removed to protect the innocent>>>>>

There's often an awkward moment when you finish speaking and open it up to questions.  So, it was yesterday when I spoke at a house I had partially staged thanks to a call from a fellow Rainer! (a blog on that to follow - but what a great team, great house, total win for all!)

I was asked how I felt about the trend to paint switchplates the same color as the wall.  (that's a trend?  eek I wasn't aware of it.  Is it?)

No, I said, I like the white... and as I looked around the room we were standing in, she was right, there were about 5 different banks of switches all told.  Here's the room, and the most restrained of the "control panels"

Are the switchplates distracting?  What about the grills?

My answer was:  To me, it adds a crispness and a newness with the white.  That there's a lot of them speaks "new construction".  It also looks like money's been spent.  (I added shyly, worrying my Scottish cheapness was showing.)

Do you all agree?  Are you seeing painted out switchplates in your area --- is this (another) trend I've missed?

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For more information on miximizing the current market value NJ luxury homes, please visit our website at www.JulietJohnsonStaging.com or call (973) 477-7000.

Here is one of the best-built houses I've come across yet!  It was inspired by American Bungalow, but has become way more than that. 

Please check it out and send any and all fans of the Craftsman style.

194 Long Hills Drive, Short Hills, NJ 07078

 Juliet Johnson Staging can be reached at (973) 477-7000 and found on the web at www.julietjohnsonstaging.com

There was some furniture here in this home in Westfield, NJ, but for the most part, the homeowners had taken everything with them to the new house.   Westfield is another NJ swanky community on a direct train line to New York City.

 The dining room set was already here.  We changed the table display, the lamps, and moved the furniture around a little.

 I try so hard to get photos from the same angle.  I always remember the blue tape afterwards!

 and here is one of dem dere prop TVS:-

I was so pleased it came with a football picture - the house opened for Super Bowl Sunday!!

 Yeah, what's up with those dots?  I'm assuming it was condensation from rain or snow that day.

 Lots more photos, including the master bedroom and bath at ttp://juliet.phanfare.com/album/564346#imageID=36943964

Here's that pool --

Juliet Johnson Staging maximizes the current market value of homes using staging and redesign techniques, furniture rental and marketing savvy.

Many have kindly asked whatever happened to the historical mansion with the organ that I was struggling with.  (and blogged about repeatedly!)

It went back on the market yesterday and was being shown to a potential buyer during the Brokers' Open House/Caravan.  This already achieves the objective (the house hadn't been shown for over 6 months) and is in direct result of the buzz our collective efforts created.  I hope.

This is the house where Woodrow Wilson slept there, Caruso sang with the live organ in the living room and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek had tea in the tea house, by the pool.

In the end I decided to play the history card, and make that history a lot more fun.  I created a Clue game with President Woodrow Wilson instead of Professor Plum, Caruso in lieu of Mr. Green and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek in place of Miss Scarlet (even though she was a Nationalist, not a Communist!  <sigh> can't win 'em all!!)

Then I created a Scavenger Hunt for the children to follow and color-in while their parents were looking at the house.

We added more furniture in the foyer/Rotunda to make it a really warm, inviting space...

 and when the fire is lit, this space does look really fun.  Plus, the table now has the Clue game on it.  (I'll take another photo when I'm over there this afternoon watering the fresh flowers)

We pruned all of the collections in the LR, the DR, the Family Room - where the Roseville Pottery collection was museum-worthy and overwhelming!  I then added a fully furnished in-law, guest suite on the lower floor, so that we would legitmately up the bedroom count.

The master bedroom had a different bedding set placed and the furniture moved around.  It hasn't photographed well, so I'll include those pix later, after my pro-photo-dude friend goes in.

Thanks to all for the advice and inspiration here.

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Juliet Johnson Staging maximizes the current market value of homes via staging, custom games, fresh floral designs and marketing input.

Snore.

"Madame Chaing Kai-Shek had tea in the tea house"

I thought it was a pool house... aw, that thing's a tea house, you say?

"Enrico Caruso sang in the Living Room"

Ye-es, that's nice, but he died in 1921 so that has to be a while ago now, no?

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 I know this $3 million home is not going to appeal to anyone with all of this history. This gentrified, sturdy and very quirky mansion from the early 20s, that has played host to notables and clearly nurtured its occupants over the years has already sat on the market for months, and may some more, if we all don't get it right.  Even its nickname is wrong for today - "the little house".

My team goes in Monday.

The realtor's team picks up Monday afternoon, with fresh photos, a new spin and probably a new price.

Yet, to honor its history is to make a living museum where the homeowner will feel like a perpetual docent.  Yet maybe she is?!  Is this why people want new construction?

Has anyone had success marketing an historic home by playing the "history card'?  I did years ago with a Vanderbilt house, and banged on boringly about provenance.  I deeply suspicious it won't work today.

I must find a way to marry bel epoque grandeur with today's "add water and stir, you got it" sensibility.  Or to tempt someone to take this principessa into her 21st century iteration.

 Anyone any thoughts?